This Notion of Life......: 2008 Backpacking Trip #1: The Mazatzal Wilderness Area

Unemployment has its benefits, such as the ability to go backpacking at any given time. I did just this with my girlfriend and two friends last weekend. On Friday, March 14, we drove to the Sheep Bridge Trailhead in Tonto National Forest. The road there was 38 miles of rough and tumble driving, complete with several creek crossings that my Honda CRV handled just fine. We spent Friday night camped on the beach below the Sheep Bridge (named that because they used to run sheep through the Mazatzal Mountains via this bridge over the Verde River). Our company was a bunch of ATV riding rednecks. They decided it would be hospitable to fire off assault rifles at 11pm. Then they tore the beach and trails up in the morning with their motorized toys. Call me an outdoor elitist if you will, but I don’t agree with this type of recreation. This people have no respect for the beauty of the natural environment, nor do they have any healthy fear for what the desert can do to a man who doesn’t come equipped with a 4x4 full of food, beer, guns, and a battery operated TV. In short, they detract from wild places in the worst ways possible.

Thankfully, the trails on the east side of the Verde were too narrow for their stupidity to flourish. On Saturday morning we had a big breakfast and set off towards the Mazatzal Wilderness Area, leaving our patriotic countrymen (after all, if you don’t like beer at 10am, ATVs, and guns, you must not be an American, right?) behind in a matter of minutes. We hiked through Sonoran Desert on the Willow Springs Trail, following a creek dotted with Cottonwoods for the first few miles before heading into the high country. Parts of the trail were hard to find and definitely difficult due to lose rocks and steep climbs. Arizona has seen a lot of rain this winter so the desert was pretty green and the creeks were unusually full. After 7 or 8 miles, we arrived at Willow Spring around 5pm and camped at this oasis for the night. Water was plentiful there.

By 9am on Sunday, the weather had taken a turn for the worst. Clouds gathered and temperatures dropped. Still, we wanted to put a couple of miles in so we made for Mountain Spring, just a few miles away. The trail ahead of us climbed steeply onto a ridgeline. We could see rain in the distance but no thunder/lighting so we weren’t worried. After about 45 minutes, it started to not rain but SNOW as we traversed the ridge. Luckily, it wasn’t blinding. It let up after about 20 minutes as we continued our trek. We reached Mountain Spring in the early afternoon and found an old corral and base camp from the sheep herding days. It was a little eerie but made a good campsite. We had lunch and then napped in the tents a bit. Temperatures hovered at 40 degrees maximum. That night we had a big dinner and even bigger fire as we struggled to fight the cold. It snowed some more that night.

Monday morning saw more cold temps and a little snow on the ground from the previous night. Spirits were pretty low….we debated whether we should stay another day at Mountain Spring and wait for the temperature to rise, or if we should just head on to the Dutchman Springs area via the Dutchman Trail (#22?). We decided on the latter. This was the smart thing to do since the temps soon warmed up throughout the region. At the same time, we began to descend into the Sonoran Desert. Soon we found ourselves hiking in T-shirts, surrounded by purple lupine, Mexican poppy, and other desert wildflowers that had blossomed overnight from the storm’s precipitation. The going became pretty slow on this section because of cacti that were spilling into the trail, but the desert’s beauty more than compensated.

As we approached Dutchman Springs, the trail disappeared entirely into a washed-out creek that was still running pretty high. Heavy rains in January and February had destroyed this section of the trail. It took a little effort, but we soon found the original trail on the other side of the creek and continued on to Dutchman’s. We found a nice campground in a green zone with plenty of water nearby, and decided to spend two nights there. Tuesday was thus our rest day. We hung out by the creek, went for a short day hike to Goslin Spring, took pictures of the wildfires, played cards, and ate well.

On Wednesday morning we broke down our camp and began the 4.5 mile hike back to Sheep Bridge trail head. It was pure open desert hiking at this point, with little or no shade. We took short breaks when shade was available. During one of these breaks, I looked down to see a mountain lion claw laying on the trail (see picture below). We would later learn some more about these wild neighbors. Again, the trail was elusive near creek crossings, but we managed to get back on track relatively quickly. We reached the car at roughly 12:45pm and were back in Flagstaff by 4:30pm to shower and fiest at a local restaurant.

On a side note, about a mile from the finish, we ran into an old desert rat out hiking alone. He was dressed in khaki canvas pants and shirt, had skin like leather, and carried a shiny six shooter in a shoulder holster. He blended in so well that I didn’t even see him ‘til I was two feet away and he said hello. This guy was like something out of an Edward Abbey novel….very interesting character….. and no I’m not lying…..you can’t make this stuff up. We talked a bit about trail conditions and eventually got to the subject of why he carried a gun. His reply was that he always carried one (this is not unusual in Arizona), especially while alone in the backcountry. I asked if he was worried about mountain lions. “Not normally”, he responded, “but the Saturday before last there was an attack on a 10 year old at Sheep Bridge”. Damn! I thought, that was a mere six days before we camped at that very spot. I googled the story when I got home and found that the desert rat wasn’t yanking my chain: http://www.kpho.com/news/15557876/detail.html . Now, for anyone who’s scared of going into the backcountry, don’t let this article put you more on edge: these types of attacks are extremely rare in general, and even rarer against adults (the few attacks that do occur are mostly on kids, petite adults, or family pets).